KEEP SATS, ABOLISH GCSES

Extract from Forever Learning Ps 83/84 ... see Chapter 6 for the full argument about exams

    With two exceptions national exams and qualifications can safely be left until young people are older and focussing on their future employment. The two occasions when pupils at school do need to be assessed with national tests are at the end of the primary phase and at fifteen. At the end of primary school it seems reasonable that parents should have an objective measure of their children’s progress in English and maths since by then they will usually have had seven years of formal schooling as well as their preschool education. And at fifteen, when young people should be allowed to leave school, all pupils should be tested in English, maths, computing and thinking ability to ensure they have the necessary skills for their employment, daily life and future education and training.

    Grades would not be used in these national tests at eleven and fifteen but percentage scores would be given and comments made about different aspects of the subjects which would include indicating areas which needed strengthening. No doubt schools would be obliged to publish their results in some form to show how they were performing but this would not generally be the cause of too much media excitement.

    My hope is that we move away from our obsession with examinations and grades, away from the belief that there are significant differences in our innate mental capabilities which account for substantial differences in attainment and away from our ideas about the role of schools in selecting and preparing young people for employment.

    We should bring GCSEs to an end. They are not useful for selecting pupils for future courses and occupations and nor are they useful for preparing pupils for work. They are a time-consuming distraction from fulfilling the many essential purposes of education, they cause too much cramming of knowledge and they do too little to encourage an intrinsic interest in learning. We should constantly remind ourselves that learning history or physics should not be about producing good answers in an exam it should be about understanding and assimilating knowledge that pupils can store away and keep returning to as adults because they find it interesting. The time for rigorous assessment is later when people start work and society needs to know they are competent to do their job.